Hosein Roasaei - ABC Department ,Politecnico di Milano,

Extreme climate may pose radical challenges to architecture, which has to provide conditions for human survival. In extreme climate, humans have learnt how to build, operate, and inhabit an artificial environment reflecting an order and organization dictated by nature. This happens in Yazd, an old trading city in the desert of the central Iranian plateau. Life in Yazd was made possible by taming nature and by the invention of architectural machines . This was a process which entailed different levels: at the territorial scale it involved a network of artificial canals for abstraction and distribution of underground water (qanat), and at architectural scale it consists of urban artifacts. These artifacts were plugged-into the qanat and operated like hydraulic machines: payab (underground water chamber), water reservoir, hammam (public bath), watermill, irrigation pool, windcatcher and houses. This paper argues that the only way to get a comprehensive understanding of this proto plug-in city and the relationship embedded in architectural forms and building materials, fresh water supply and natural landscape is through cross-scale sections. To clarify our point, this paper focuses on architecture of houses located in Yazd. The radical conditioning of humans by the built environment can be well exemplified by the architecture of the house, whose inhabitants migrate seasonally from winter to summer quarters, and daily from the underground level to the rooftop. By unpacking the notion of built environment in Yazd and its relation with its nature, together with evocation of Peter Cook‟s Plug-In City, this paper tires to understand the role of architecture in between harsh and extreme climate conditions, claiming that Yazd, recently included in the UNESCO list, may also help us envisage the future of human settlements.

plug-in city, cross-scale section, Yazd, natural landscape, built environment